T’would be fair to say that in Lady Gothique’s world, July was overall a month full of shit. You know when everything you own falls apart all at once, and you’re left with nothing functional, needing megabucks to replace or fix all your crap with, generally feeling like shit? That was my July.
So because I have a something of a captive audience here (KEEP READING, BITCHES!) and all of my IRL-mates are sick of my moaning, I am going to share my distress with you all, and you will duly feel very sorry for me. Ok? Good.
So, come the end of June, I got me boat (I live on a narrowboat, I’ve mentioned this before) and went for a bimble down the canal to have a couple of weeks out and to watch a historic boat rally, because I’m proper rock and roll, me.
Before everything went tits up.
All was well when I got there, until I heard a rather alarming dripping sound in the middle of the night, levitated out of bed, as you do, and found that the bit of the boat where the propeller comes into the engine was leaking in canal water, fortunately only due to a loose nut and a cracked tube. So because I am poorly prepared for pretty much everything apart from eating chocolate and watching TV in my underwear, I had no tools to sort this out with, and being as it was now 1am, not really a lot of options for getting help!
Anyway, in my nightie and flipflops (I had a skull on my nightie, which helped a lot), I utilised the tools I had available to me, and fixed the bastard with a roll of duct tape and a Tesco Value adjustable spanner, and consequently felt like a Boss Ass Pioneer Bitch.
No really, a Tesco Value adjustable spanner. Image courtesy of Bitch Please, I’m Spiderman, worth mentioning for their Tumblr name as well as the image!
Also, apparently you can make clothes out of duct tape, as this Pinterest post in “Corsets and Gothic Clothes” demonstrates… However, I have to assume that the term “duct tape” means something other than sticky-as-fuck tape to the lady below, either that or she lost both nipples when getting undressed.
So, back to bed.
I spent ages the next day telling everyone about my Mad Skillz with the Tesco Value spanner and duct tape, and generally feeling proud of myself, when I noticed a puddle of water developing in front of my fridge/freezer.
I checked this out, and duly found that this too has apparently borked beyond repair (unrelated to the previous OMG I’M SINKING) incident, and boat fridges commonly cost north of £500 each, due to factors such as 12v power, some kind of fancy cooling thing, safety regulations, and the greedy effing bastards that sell them.
So, no fridge, but that isn’t the end of the world for someone used to emptying their own toilet. I have cupboards full of tinned stuff stored up for just this sort of situation (well, mainly for the zombie apocalypse if I’m honest, actually) so I wasn’t going to starve. I started putting out feelers for a second hand fridge, and in the meantime, got myself out a Fray Bentos pie in a tin (Dobbin, is that you?) and decided that I was coping rather well.
That’s when the tin opener broke.
A tin opener. A tiny, tiny thing, available for sale at sub-£1 in any supermarket. Everyone has at least two, right? No, not me. And would you believe, nobody was on board anywhere nearby to lend me one either.
I phoned my Mum (because obvs) and she suggested using things like a vegetable peeler and hammer to get into the pie, and this seemed reasonable.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to open a tinned pie with a lump hammer and a pointy thing, but lemme share some advice with you right now: don’t feckin’ bother. Every time I hit the pointy thing with the mallet, the pie sailed off the counter, and yet didn’t get any closer to opening up. Things continued in this manner for some time until I inevitably hit my finger with the hammer, threw the pie at the wall as hard as I could, walked out and went to the pub.
So anyhow, a week passed, someone sold me a second hand 12v fridge for £100, all was well, and I turned the boat around to head back to my mooring. Around two hours into the trip, I noticed that the engine was getting very hot and smoky, but because I can’t fix shit for shit, I decided to just ignore it all and push on for home, which wasn’t far.
That worked out as well as ignoring an overheating engine usually does… the boat promptly conked out in the middle of the canal, with no warning (apart from all of the very clear and obvious warnings I had already ignored, I mean)… And I had to punt it into the bank, which was a long stretch of overgrowth not designed for stopping at.
I took a giant leap from the boat to the bank in order to tie the boat up, and promptly landed with both feet in a pile of dog shit, on top of a stinging nettle which I swear, went straight up my shorts and stung me in a place that no girl ever deserved to be stung.
Letting the engine cool down and trying again failed, it started but overheated again, and so I had to bow-haul (pull along by a rope) the effing boat, a steel narrowboat, bear in mind, not a dinky toy, the remaining mile home, effing and blinding all the way.
Turns out, the pipe had popped off the coolant system and dumped all the water out into the hull… Fortunately, this should be a fairly easy fix, assuming I haven’t terminally borked the engine by running it too hot.
EVERYTHING IS BROKEN AND EVERYTHING SUCKS: Part One: Complete. Stay tuned for part two…
totally stuipid